Things to do

The main cloud-hunting spot near Da Lat: 1,709 metres, with the cloud sea settling into the valley right below the summit. Twenty to twenty-five minutes from town by bike, then a 20–30 minute walk — short, but in the dark and on dirt.

The 5 km shoreline loop is the city's spine — 45 to 60 minutes on foot, and it is at its best in the mist between 05:30 and 08:00.

A guesthouse shaped like a mushroom forest, designed by the daughter of a former president of Vietnam. You can climb through it, and you can stay the night. Russians often call it the Crazy House, Vietnamese say Hang Nga villa.

The one-kilometre gravity coaster down through the pines is the single most-booked activity in Da Lat, and it deserves it.

A large landscaped park on the slopes above Da Thien lake: pines, flowerbeds, LOVE letters clipped out of shrubs, a giant chess set and a gazebo on the water. People come here for a walk and photos, not for wilderness.

Seven tiers, a hundred metres wide, and by a distance the most photogenic waterfall in the province. Worth the hour each way.

A loud thirty-metre curtain you can walk behind, with a 24-metre laughing Buddha twenty metres from the gate.

The mountain the city looks at. Radar Peak is a 2.5 km trail, an hour and a half up; the true summit at 2,167 m is a 7 km, 4–5 hour commitment.

A 1920s French tea estate at 1,650 m, with wind turbines standing over the rows. This is the best public spot in Vietnam for san may — cloud hunting.

A Dutch-style dairy where children feed the cows and everyone gets free fresh milk. The best free family outing near Da Lat.

Over a hundred dogs across 36 breeds, plus strawberry and tomato fields and a 400-metre dry slide. Closest and cheapest of the kid farms.

Starts with a walk through Da Lat Central Market, which is where the class earns its money — you learn what the vegetables actually are before you cook them.

Pink walls on a stone base, steep tiled roofs with dormers, a row of pointed windows and urns of chrysanthemums along the drive — the complex stands out in the city by colour alone and is visible from afar. Locals call it Nhà thờ Mai Anh. It is a working convent rather than a museum: people come for the service, while visitors photograph the facade from the forecourt. The grounds look out over the valley and the tiled roofs below.

Hydroponic greenhouses where you pick the strawberries yourself. Da Lat is the only place in Vietnam cool enough for them to grow properly.

The place is built around one idea: your tea is warmed on charcoal at your own table. A grate is cut into a solid wood slab, coals glow underneath, a glass pot sits on top — the drink finishes in front of you and stays hot through the whole conversation, which in Da Lat damp matters more than tasting notes. The garden sits under a roof: tree ferns as tall as a person, a stream with wooden footbridges, gravel underfoot, a fire pit in the middle of the room and folding chairs around it. The roof is translucent with strips of cloth stretched over it, so the light stays daylight and the rain stays outside. Some tables are set at the edge of the slope, with a view over the valley and the built-up hill opposite.

A working Zen monastery above Tuyen Lam Lake with the best-kept gardens in Da Lat. The place widens your inner range for beauty by sheer concentration of it per square metre: bonsai terraces, paths with stone lanterns among the pines, flower beds in the courtyards and a white statue in the main hall — all on one hillside. The 2.3 km cable car over pine forest takes twelve minutes and lands at the gate.

The only working stretch of the old rack railway, leaving from the art-deco station of 1938. Seven kilometres to Trai Mat, and at the end the Linh Phuoc pagoda with a 49-metre dragon built from 12,000 bottles.

A chocolate house in a wooden chalet on the way to Lang Biang: counters of bars and own-brand cocoa powder, a hall where a class runs — the screen walks you through the cacao varieties (criollo, forastero, trinitario) and you taste as you go — and tables where you can simply sit with a cup of their own chocolate. In the same grounds there is the Balava restaurant with pizza, pasta and grilled chicken, and a meadow where they give horse rides.

A park nine kilometres north of town, at the foot of Lang Biang. You go in under an arch shaped like a giant tree, and behind it are gardens with a koi pond you can feed, waterfalls, a square for the gong performance, a K'Ho craft village with folk costumes for hire, a go-kart track and a small animal enclosure — raccoons, rabbits, goats. The map at the entrance lists more than twenty points, so walking the whole of it takes half a day.

A hotel and a park at once: a hundred hectares of pine forest at the foot of Nui Voi — Elephant Mountain — half an hour from Da Lat along the airport road. It is built not as a hotel with a garden but as a park with villas inside it: you are driven around in a buggy, and you can either stay the night or come for the day on a ticket. The themed zones are borrowed from other cultures and each sits on its own slope: a Japanese garden with a red torii gate, a house under a curved roof, clipped ball-shaped shrubs and beds of hydrangeas; a Chinese courtyard with a round moon gate in the wall, a pavilion under a hundred silk lanterns and carved wooden screens; a Korean hanok; a Central Highlands village with longhouses. In the middle is a lake with a fountain, a gilded seated Buddha on a platform in the middle of a white bridge, and above it, up the steps, a Zen monastery with an orange tiled roof and a white statue of Guanyin. Between the zones run stone paths, boardwalks along the stream and benches under bamboo and pines. The lodging is scattered over the hills: three-storey white villas with mansard roofs and flower names — Tulip, Mimosa, Lavender — on one slope, a row of container bungalows with wooden decks above the valley on another. The rooms are modern and expensively finished: backlit timber battens on the wall, a full-height window with two armchairs and a small table, a freestanding tub by a blinded window. The view over the pine hills is the main reason to come: in the rain the mist crawls along the ridges, and you see it just as well from the decks as from the room window.

An onsen on the edge of a slope: the hot baths stand at panoramic windows with pines and city roofs behind them. There are wooden two-person tubs with a line of stepping stones between them and a larger pool under a round lamp, steam rising off the water. Besides the water there are three saunas in sequence — Himalayan salt, herbal and hot stone. The rest room has a salt wall, sand underfoot and straw cushions, and there is a cafe with tea upstairs.

A Japanese quarter under the pines: red torii gates, a small street of shops, a koi pond with bridges, pavilions over the water, pines clipped into bonsai shapes and a valley view from the wooden decks. People come here to take pictures rather than to walk in nature: there is kimono hire and rooms set up for shooting.

A night show staged inside the pine forest around Ho Than Tho — the Lake of Sighs, the old tourist area reopened as a light park. The trunks are lit from below, and between them stand a tunnel of flowers, arches and wings several metres high, with hydrangea beds along the paths. This is an evening in itself, not a photo stop — everyone we know who has been came back impressed, without exception.

A brick church with two spires in Cam Ly: pointed arches, a rose window over the door, full-height stained glass in the sanctuary and saints painted across the vault. An arcade with patterned floor tiles runs along the building. On the terrace in front stands a canopy chapel with a statue of the Virgin, a clipped garden and small trees in bronze planters around it.